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PAY FOR TORRENTED GAMES AT GOG.COM

treave

Arcane
Patron
Joined
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Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
Who cares if it uses a crack to achieve that?

This is less hypocritical than Ubisoft using a scene crack to bypass their own DRM, but I think it's a problem of them hiding the fact that they are using scene coders' work to remove DRM from the games.

They're not removing it themselves nor are the publishers giving them a non-DRM copy, but they're technically using illegal methods to remove the DRM, since after all we know crackers are filthy scum who have nothing better to do than impose on the digital rights of consumers to be managed.

ecliptic said:
treave wrote:
That's self-defeating. When the pirates win you don't get any more games. Imagine if everyone pirated Fallout 3 and Bethesda went bankrupt like Interplay did and you didn't get Fallout 4.


I'd count that as a victory.

If by victory you mean losing the makers of the beloved Fallout and Oblivion franchise to a bunch of parasitic leechers.
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
treave said:
Zed said:
treave said:
Well, if it helps, you're helping whoever runs the site make a living. :lol: When you torrent the pirates win.
Pirates deserve to win. Because of things like this.

That's self-defeating. When the pirates win you don't get any more games. Imagine if everyone pirated Fallout 3 and Bethesda went bankrupt like Interplay did and you didn't get Fallout 4.

Good troll, sir.

:thumbsup:
 

SuicideBunny

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Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Torment: Tides of Numenera
treave said:
If by victory you mean losing the makers of the beloved Fallout and Oblivion franchise to a bunch of parasitic leechers.
a man is free to dream....

also, who the fuck cares about any of this?
 

Tolknaz

Augur
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479
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Estonia
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
It is also possible they paid activision for the warez version. Publisher pays another publisher for the right to publish a game that includes a "stolen" crack. The mind boggles.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,500
treave said:
That's self-defeating. When the pirates win you don't get any more games. Imagine if everyone pirated Fallout 3 and Bethesda went bankrupt like Interplay did and you didn't get Fallout 4.

I simulated it, it's not that harsh. They would stop making movies and throwing money to trees and change model to multi-source financing.

No piracy -> no free advertising -> harder to compete against free to view TV -> people would more likely pay 5$ for a DVD than 35$ - 70 $ for a game. -> games would fade into obscurity. (At least complex games, because of lack of indirect competition.)

Naw piracy is much less problematic than lack of support from laws. When laws support movie authors much better, game developers are screwed. All these threats against games for brutal content doesn't make it better.

In fact I wonder if Bloodlines would be possible to distribute in current situation. You know you are selling morphine...

relootz said:
I dont understand the problem of using a crack. You buy the game to show your support for the makers of the game and you get a complete working no drm version.

Who cares if it uses a crack to achieve that?

Cracks are programs that original authors released into free distribution. The catch is they forbade any modifications. This makes sense, a modified crack is highly likely a virus.

Now the problem is the commercial company must abide to rules and customs. The trouble is they removed info original authors added into, which is much worse than making a crack. It's either distribute the crack openly as a crack, and thank original authors for theirs, probably, illegal work, or compile the original executable without any copy protection/DRM.

A company which lied about using crack, is equally likely to blow up your computer or copy private information when it would be profitable for them...
 
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A company which lied about using crack, is equally likely to blow up your computer or copy private information when it would be profitable for them...

that's a little extreme. The problem here is that you're essentially paying for what you could get from free on the internet (literally, not "you can always get it for free :smug:")
 

Mnemon

Educated
Joined
Jul 20, 2004
Messages
64
Clockwork Knight said:
The problem here is that you're essentially paying for what you could get from free on the internet (literally, not "you can always get it for free :smug:")

What you get from GoG is legality. You pay for a license and a version of the software that has been approved by the current rights owner. So no, you are not "essentially" paying for something you would/could get for free.
 

Zeus

Cipher
Joined
Apr 25, 2008
Messages
1,523
Mnemon said:
Clockwork Knight said:
The problem here is that you're essentially paying for what you could get from free on the internet (literally, not "you can always get it for free :smug:")

What you get from GoG is legality. You pay for a license and a version of the software that has been approved by the current rights owner. So no, you are not "essentially" paying for something you would/could get for free.

It's sort of like KFC. Sure, the recipe's been reverse-engineered and is available for free on the internet; you could easily make it yourself. And sure, the Colonel's been dead a while now, and the money you give KFC is just going to some soulless Megacorp. But sometimes it's nice to just hand over a few bucks and get a bucket of chicken.
 

Mnemon

Educated
Joined
Jul 20, 2004
Messages
64
Except that GoG, up to this point, is not yet some soulless corporation. And to be honest I don't care much. GoG's not doing much harm. KFC is still on a quite different level.

At the point I am in my life legality is something that I am happy to pay for. Especially as GoG's pricing is peanuts.
 

Zards

Novice
Joined
Mar 18, 2010
Messages
2
Mnemon said:
At the point I am in my life legality is something that I am happy to pay for. Especially as GoG's pricing is peanuts.

Legality is nice and all, but honestly it's not really a "value-add". For me, GoG's value lies purely in convenience.

In order to pirate a game (especially an old one), you generally have to track down a torrent or find it on usenet, download it, unrar it, virus-scan it, install it, track down patches online (and these can be a freaking pain for older games with defunct publishers), figure out compatibility issues, etc etc. In general, not including the actual download time, this can take up to an hour or more if issues arise. Back in high school and college, this was great and definitely worth it for me. Now, factoring in my hourly salary and extremely limited spare time, no way. If I can pay GoG $10 (I mean, a decent lunch costs that much nowadays!) to do that for me, that is a great deal.

So essentially it's all that headache and busywork to pirate an old game, vs $10 and a single, convenient installer I can double click on and forget about. There is absolutely no contest between those two options for me. The legality aspect does come into play a bit in terms of having confidence that GoG will be around in a few years (as opposed to being sued into oblivion), but mostly it's that convenience that's worth the money.
 

SuicideBunny

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Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Torment: Tides of Numenera
Zards said:
GoG's value lies purely in convenience.
pretty much.
especially with all those extras they pack in together with the game.
 

MetalCraze

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2007
Messages
21,104
Location
Urkanistan
First they downloaded games from Abandonia and sold them now they torrent them and sell them

Incline or decline of GoG?

You decide

SuicideBunny said:
Zards said:
GoG's value lies purely in convenience.
pretty much.
especially with all those extras they pack in together with the game.

Correction: with all those extras that are FREEly available everywhere for FREE and are already in various game packs on Undeground Gamer from which they download

But... but I'm too lazy to add 3 strings to DosBox config myself! And all of you are just dirty pirates - I steal my games for money see!
 

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
MC said:
Correction: with all those extras that are FREEly available everywhere for FREE and are already in various game packs on Undeground Gamer from which they download.
You have some proof MC, or maybe you're talking out of your ass (as always)?
Point me to some UG torrents that GoG clearly downloaded their extras from. 1-2 will be enough.
 

SuicideBunny

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Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Torment: Tides of Numenera
MetalCraze said:
Correction: with all those extras that are FREEly available everywhere for FREE and are already in various game packs on Undeground Gamer from which they download
it's still more convenient to have someone else hunt the shit down, especially considering ug's dubious legal standing. when i'm downloading games and their goodies on company time, sites with dubious legal standing are a no-go.
But... but I'm too lazy to add 3 strings to DosBox config myself!
that's pretty much the definition of convenience. what's your point?
And all of you are just dirty pirates - I steal my games for money see!
who the fuck are you talking to now?
 

MetalCraze

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2007
Messages
21,104
Location
Urkanistan
Talking about how they sell something that infringes the copyright and EULA which comes with the game right away.

it's still more convenient to have someone else hunt the shit down, especially considering ug's dubious legal standing. when i'm downloading games and their goodies on company time, sites with dubious legal standing are a no-go.
Duh that's why people pirate at home
I still can't see how it's hard to add 3 lines in config or even use a comfortable front-end like D-Fend (which btw lets you create a gamepack with all settings you've made and then just install and play it with those settings right away)
 

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
^
I vote for custom tag for Skyway.
I think that "Declined Individual" would be quite fitting. :(
 

Zeus

Cipher
Joined
Apr 25, 2008
Messages
1,523
MetalCraze said:
I still can't see how it's hard to add 3 lines in config or even use a comfortable front-end like D-Fend (which btw lets you create a gamepack with all settings you've made and then just install and play it with those settings right away)

Do you mean D-Fend Reloaded? That's my personal favorite.
 

Zards

Novice
Joined
Mar 18, 2010
Messages
2
Flatlander said:
SuicideBunny said:
also, who the fuck cares about any of this?

Internet drama is fun :)

On the subject of configuring dosbox and so forth, I think the frontends introduce more busywork than they save. Configuring dosbox by hand takes like 3 minutes of editing the config file, but when it's not necessary, why bother? Plus, resolving Windows compat (and hunting down patches to old games) is much more time consuming than simple dosbox configs.
 
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Most people don't want to write anything on config or deal with DOSbox or the like - if you can choose between manually setting up everything and paying a pittance for an .exe you can double click on, they will obviously want the latter. The price asked for those games is nothing to anyone with a job better than burger flipping.

I imagine most players just want to replay a game or two instead of having a massive DOS library, so it's more beneficial to just pay like $20 to have all your favorite games ready-to-go.
 

Zeus

Cipher
Joined
Apr 25, 2008
Messages
1,523
Clockwork Knight said:
Most people don't want to write anything on config or deal with DOSbox or the like - if you can choose between manually setting up everything and paying a pittance for an .exe you can double click on, they will obviously want the latter. The price asked for those games is nothing to anyone with a job better than burger flipping.

I imagine most players just want to replay a game or two instead of having a massive DOS library, so it's more beneficial to just pay like $20 to have all your favorite games ready-to-go.

Yeah, GOG's greatest assets are convenience and legality. It's why people buy little $5 packages of blackberries at the supermarket when they could just pull over on the side of the road and pick 'em. Technically, it's illegal. Plus, it's a pain in the ass for most people.

Me, I like picking blackberries myself. It's fun, I get to go out in the sun, maybe risk as pider bite. But you can't really compare old DOS games to blackberries. It just doesn't hold. Who would even try such a thing?
 

Aikanaro

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 3, 2004
Messages
142
So, I don't really care, but this is still a dick move by GoG. Taking other people's work and claiming it as your own - then selling it - is a shitty thing to do.

It's also probably illegal, though I guess they're pretty safe in counting on the scene group not suing them over it...
 

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